*Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):* 1. What mods do you use for Heroes III? / What version of the game are you using? I usually play Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death with the HD mod (downloadable from sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/). Sometimes, I'll also use Horn of the Abyss (also known as HotA), but I'm not using it in this video. The HD mod is responsible for most of the features that you see in my videos. Note that the Heroes III HD mod is not compatible with Ubisoft's HD Edition on Steam. 2. How do I get your version of the game? Shadow of Death is functionally the same (e.g. there are no gameplay differences) as the Heroes III Complete Edition, which you can get from www.gog.com/game/heroes_of_might_and_magic_3_complete_edition for relatively cheap. Horn of the Abyss can be obtained from download.h3hota.com/HotA_setup. 3. How do you see how far units can move in combat? This is one feature of the HD mod (see FAQ #1) and can be done by mousing over a unit and holding down the CTRL key. 4. What are the hotkeys that you use? This is one feature of the HD mod (see FAQ #1). The most frequent hotkeys that I use for army management are: - CTRL+Click to create a 1-stack - ALT+Click to group up all units of the same type into one big stack - SHIFT+Click to split a stack into two halves - CTRL+SHIFT+Click to fill up all remaining empty slots with a 1-stack A full list of the hotkeys that the HD mod provides can be found at sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/eng/description/extended-ui. 5. How do you display the extended hero details while setting up a map? This is one feature of the HD mod (see FAQ #1) and can be done simply by right-clicking on a hero's portrait while selecting a hero. Note that Single Scenarios do not support this feature. 6. How do you step through Two-Way Monoliths and Subterranean Gates without moving your hero? Pressing the Space Bar key will cause your hero to step on the same square that they are currently on, allowing them to move through Two-Way Monoliths and Subterranean Gates at will. The Space Bar key can also be used on Water Wheels, Windmills, Mystical Gardens, and other map objects. Note that this feature is only available in versions of Heroes III that come later than Restoration of Erathia, meaning that this cannot be done in Ubisoft's HD Edition on Steam. 7. How can I get my unit animations in combat to be as fast as yours? To get accelerated unit animations, download crAnim.txt from heroesportal.net/getfile.php?file=/files/information/16/Cranim.txt and put it into the Data folder of your Heroes III directory.
Even though I watched 2 and a half hours of this video I'm still wondering how in the hell are you actually winning a game with just a ballista. Your gameplay is insane, Jesus! I've been binge watching your videos like it's a TV show lmao
Halberdiers: 140 health with 5 defense, 20-30 damage with 6 attack / week. 1050 gold / week. Swordsmen: 140 health with 12 defense, 24-36 damage with 10 attack / week. 1200 gold / week. So you get over double the effective health against physical damage and 2 times the effective damage for 14% increased cost. Swordsmen are a better investment than Halberdiers are.
An idea for new challenge: "Might and Magic bros" - You are obliged to use ONLY 2 Heroes, one of witch will only be able to use his might, and the another one will only be able to use his magic and passive stack retaliations. You are not allowed to buy, nor to free up any additional heroes from prisons. So, one starting hero (whom you plan to use for might or magic as you decide), and another one which you will buy in your tavern to bi his brother / sister :) . Additional restrictions: no implosion, no TP and DD (even with magic hero). So, 2 mains, one magic, one might. Maybe some additional rules....
Only playing every other turn would be really interesting! It means the AI heroes would be able to effectively move twice as far as your heroes, and it would be really hard to build up your starting town.
Mekick, watching your videos doesn't get more fun as the challenges become more difficult, but it does when the game drives you crazy or when you have to stay creative for the entire game. For example, a challenge like "dismiss all units at the end of the week" could be a lot of fun, especially if you pair it with diplomacy to add the game more pace. There will be a lot of twists and turns, and I personally think it would make a very interesting and enjoyable gameplay. There will also be some epic fights which we love to see! Please give it a thought, and keep up the good work.
Thanks! I'll keep this in mind going forward, although unfortunately I have some more "boring" challenges planned coming up that I want to get through first since they've been heavily requested.
I still think your play is centered around the usage of mass slow. So my suggestion would be Slowbob challenge: 1. No units above speed 6 allowed (including artifact boosted creatures) 2. Slow and haste prohibited
NO WAY !!!! A NEW VIDEO !!! Tnx you Me-kick !!!! I refreshed your youtube profile every day in hope there was a new video i missed in nortifications ... It was worth it :D
I think we are slowly going towards "ammo cart only" or, dare I say, "no army only" (possibly in WOG with just a commander). Seriously, you can somehow pull that one off as well, I am sure now :) Absolutely loving the videos, keep it up!
And by saying "I could" you mean the ammo cart only, right :P Anyway, when I first started watching your videos, I was a big fan the idea of you trying out WOG as it was the one I had been playing for years lately. But now, after going through (I think) all of your videos, I've rediscovered my love for the good old non-WOG Heroes 3. For which I thank you. And I also thank you for all the lovely playthroughs, and needless to say, I am always looking forward to what's next. Cheers!
Yes, that's right (Ammo Cart Only). Oh, wow! I've never heard of anyone who tried WoG for Single Player purposes and then made a switch back over to SoD. That's awesome to hear, but you could always alternate between both versions, of course. ;) You're welcome for the content. Thanks for watching and commenting!
He is. Whether you consider me insane or not, the way this challenge turns out isn't as spectacular as you think. I appreciate your high opinion of me, though!
Awesome! I've been playing Heroes III for a long time too, but it was only in the last few years that I started learning more "advanced" techniques like Hero Chaining and Poor Man's Town Portal. You may learn a thing or two from this video too, but just don't expect anything too stellar. ;)
As always, incredible! If people saw it on some cybergaming tv channel, you would be the star! Are you going to do some other challenges?) May be "autocombat only" or "tier 7 only"(where you'll have to wait and build nessesary things for tier 7 dwelling, while AI will get nice boost during that time), or you can play "Wake of Gods", where you actually need to think a lot and watch the story carefully for solving puzzels)) It would be {russian accent} VERY NICE! I'm sure you're gonna get {russian accent again}GREAT SUCCESS!
Thanks! I don't think that these videos are nearly so praiseworthy, though. To answer your question, I do intend to do some other challenges, yes. In fact, Auto Combat Only will be next. I'm not quite interested in doing another Tier-based challenge, though. lol, I got a good chuckle out of "VERY NICE!" and "GREAT SUCCESS!". :P
MeKick why do you always have to upload those videos when I'm very busy and have a ton of deadlines on my schedule and so on. I just can't resist watching your playthrough when it pops up. Anyway, fuck those stupid duties and chores, I had a great time watching you play. This is all that matters. Entertaining as hell. Hope you won't ever run out of ideas for these challenge videos. Your fan, Dmitry.
lol, sorry about that! I can empathize with you when it comes to busy schedules. It's a shame that you can't watch the videos right away, but at least they'll be here when you find time in your schedule to watch them. :) I'll try my best to keep the videos coming. Thank you for your continued support!
“The last air bender” challenge , can use units only allow to use air magic , no surrender /retreat allow , have to explore map with armies if one hero die , game over.
It's official I have no clue how to make harder challenge than this one that should be technically possible. You are a crazy person and you have all my respect
I appreciate your opinion of me, but to be honest, I don't think I've earned such praise with this challenge. In my opinion, I relied too heavily on the retaliations of my units for me to proudly call the "Ballista Only" challenge a success.
I used the retaliations mostly because there was no way to get around having to use them, but I see what you mean. The challenge did take a fair bit of patience to do, but hopefully you enjoyed it at least.
no comment about the stables next to his hero in the actual minute he starts rambling about how he would like a stables :))))))))))) missing it all the way! Oh Mehkick
Hmm, interesting. To be honest, I'm not so sure that I "missed" the Stables given that it was a little out of the way of my hero chain. I may have ignored it on purpose and then not said anything about my decision. Oh well! I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
You are basically the HOMM3 equivalent of those "Dark Souls 1/2/3 no hit, no death" youtubers! Insane performance and you're not even asian (well, I just suppose by the accent :P)!
Even though this is probably the hardest game ever seen,I can't imagine this is actually a thing lol,along with the fact that I actually watch your vids everyday because I wanna learn from pros like (even though you confess yourself you're not a pro but I say you are)
To be honest, this match wasn't all that hard given that I had no way to prevent my units from retaliating. Despite it being a shorter match, even Ranged Only was significantly more difficult than this playthrough since I was always under pressure in that match, and I'm not even sure I would consider that as the toughest challenge I've done so far. Anyway, good on you for watching my videos! I still stand by the fact that I'm a far cry from the best players in Heroes III, though. ;)
28:04 : i honestly think that harpy AI vs ranged is programmed not to attack them because they would return to their starting square and would no longer block ranged unit... and AI doesn't know that harpy actually wouldn't return anywhere :D
I tried this challenge recently. The highest damage i got from my ballista was 950 on a single shot, so it can deal some significant damage late game. Not much compared to a unit powerstack though.
Wow, nice! Like you said, the Ballista can do significant damage in the late game, although it probably won't ever be hitting as hard as any run-of-the-mill powerstack.
treasure chests in homm3 troll you by giving you crappy artifacts when you desperately need gold but still it's nothing compared to HOMM2 where they could tell you that you've been ambushed and must fight a horde of super fast rogues ;D, I wish there was a good random map generator for homm2 it was so awesome
Haha, interesting! I completely forgot about the Rogue ambush from Heroes II. There were a lot of silly things in that game that (for better or for worse) got removed in Heroes III. One of my favorites was the Sphinx that would occasionally eat your hero ;)
@@TheKnownWorld Sphinx was cool. oh and there was this fun artifact that made you pay gold every turn called tax lien :D. And i am pretty sure you could get it from treasure chest too :D. I really loved the dreamy fairy taleish climate of homm2. If it wasnt for the lack of good random map generator i would still be playing it today.
Yeah, I do think that there's a certain charm to Heroes II's atmosphere, so I can understand why some people still enjoy revisiting that game even today. As for Heroes II's artifacts, I can't help but fondly recall the Fizbin of Misfortune. Trying to pass it around from player to player was always silly :')
Hello MeKick, these challenge videos are awesome, keep up the good work! Allow me to offer you a challenge, I hope you will make it somewhere in the future. No main hero challenge: There is only one rule: at the beginning of the weeks you have to dismiss the actually strongest hero (except at 111). The strength is depending on the amount of the four main skills (Attack, Defense, Power, Knowledge) without Artifacts. In case of equality you can choose. This must be the first step at the beginning of the week! Deleted heroes can not be hired again. This means you can deliver all your Artifacts and your army to a weaker hero at the end of the week, but be careful, if you forget it or if you have no chance to do it, you lose everything. I think it would be fun, because you must be very very careful on many ways. Have a nice day and sorry for my bad English.. :(
No worries! I understood you just fine. Other people have proposed variations of this challenge in an effort to encourage me to use multiple heroes throughout the match. At the moment however, I have other challenges lined up that I would prefer to focus on first before I consider taking on any new ones. It's great to know that you like my content! Thanks for the suggestion :)
:D Seriously though, I figured that some people would think that the restrictions I outlined alone weren't enough. Perhaps they're correct given how this match turned out.
Oh my god, man! I really thought that you will not be able to stand a chance. But you made it! Absolute champion! If you give me where to send it, I will send you a chocolate medal of honor. Great job man! ;)
lol, thanks, but I don't think I deserve such praise. The way this match turned out had me focusing less on the Ballista and more on the retaliations of my units to get me through the challenge.
TheKnownWorld Actually no. You were forced to focus on defending your towns most of the time. And as for sieging other towns and going through other battles - you did just what you promised. I mean, you didn't focus on collecting a power stack of champs+Griffs to retaliate your game through - you found a way to get ballista work. And yes, if you haven't lost stannis early, you would have shown them who has the biggest ballista :)
Haha, nice! "The biggest Ballista", eh? I like it! Anyway, you have indeed raised some very fair points. There was no way to get around defending my towns for most of the match. However, even though I did as I promised, a lot of my damage inevitably came from my powerstacks (particularly Champions). I feel like this led to a disappointing late game, but I can certainly see why you would say otherwise. Thanks for sharing your opinion about the match!
I'd be interested to see a random spells challenge. Always casting a random spell available in combat or something that would prioritize the use of spells that are not commonly favoured.
This seems like a cool concept to showcase spells that aren't commonly used, but there's a reason why those spells often aren't used in the first place. Besides, I've already done a playthrough with no spells at all, so I can't see this challenge being any more difficult than that.
Mekick, why not you make up a scenario challenge for your next video. Probably *zombie apocalypse scenario in which you ONLY use zombies against your enemy* or perhaps *you are the only hope of mankind in which all a.i are necros and all vs 1.* Just ideas for your next vid. P.s im still rewatching your past vids. Still the best homm3 player i know in utube :)
lol, I appreciate your idea, but I've already got the next few challenges lined up for the time being. Besides, I already tried doing something like this a long time ago in the form of a "Dwarves Only" challenge, but that failed spectacularly. Given that Dwarves are stronger than Zombies, I doubt Zombies Only would turn out any better. It's nice to hear you're still watching my past content!
Without a doubt, Heroes III is my number one game not just for the franchise it belongs to, but as my favorite game overall. In the past, I used to enjoy Heroes II a fair bit too.
No, it's not just you. The AI prioritizes certain secondary skills over others, and Ballistics happens to be one secondary skill which they value quite highly.
At around 39:10 you wished that you had a stable near by so that you could upgrade your caviliars to chamipions for free. At 39:25, is that not a stable below the hut and above those two obiliscs???
TheKnownWorld did you ever consider doing challanges like these in pvp, now the way i imagined it would be is that both players are doing a challenge, such as one player can only use units and the other play can only use spells or something along those lines
No, I haven't. While this sounds like a pretty cool suggestion, I prefer the idea of playing standard PvP matches without any additional handicaps beyond whatever rules I'm already using.
Oooooookay, I just saw this video in my YT feed and I was instantly like: "what the actual f**k". After my finals I'll make make a marathon on this video. xD
It's not quite as crazy as you might think. I tried my best to make this match as close to "Ballista Only" as I could, but I failed in a number of aspects.
According to 40:08 I think stable's feature of free upgrade cavaliers to champions came from homm 2 expansion. In original game were several buildings with only purposes to afford free upgrades for certain creatures, but expansion went further to add other buildings with new features, stables for example, yet I can't remember other similar effects of expansion's building. So in homm 3 could have some things from homm 2, but for some reasons they were cut off not so good, like all heroes in tavern has starting pack of creatures, just as homm 2. And you can notice, particularly in HotA, some heroes, who was hired from tavern after those, who had starting pack, not granted by appropriated amount of movement points. Like Tower heroes, who would have golems, but there is nothing more than one gremlin and movement points looking like this hero started day with speed 3. I mean that feature of stable maybe nothing more than just result of sloppy work of clearing unwanted mechanics, which past unnoticed.
Hmm, interesting theory. I'm aware that the Stables feature was also present in Heroes II for upgrading Cavaliers to Champions, but from a balancing viewpoint, I'm still surprised that they carried it over to Heroes III when factoring in just how strong Castle already is.
No open-world offence challenge? (You are not allowed to fight unless you are attacking/defending city, no boosts could be picked up like exp stones and chest + heroes must finish their turn ONLY in cities)
Thanks, although I don't entirely agree with "absolute worst". I consider Gerwulf to be worse because he starts off with 0 Attack Skill and Torosar to be even worse than Gerwulf since he doesn't even come with Artillery.
TheKnownWorld Earth magic is surely a must have, at least for me, that mass slow and town portal. But I've always underestimated water magic, it's really nice though especially if you're a "battle mage" (might but using support magic). Mass forgetfulness, mass cure, mass prayer, mass weakness. You should try it out sometime bro^^
In regards to your comments at the end, I feel like the lack of the ballista's power evident in this video has a large bit to deal with the fact that you lost your main hero halfway through and had to level up a side hero for the next couple hours before you got him back. In addition, the lack of apparent attack-boosting artifacts certainly downplayed its usefulness. A truer show of a ballista's power can definitely be seen in some of the SoD campaigns though, where you can solo some of the later maps with your ballista
You're right in that it took me a while to get my main hero back, but even when I regained control of him again with 31 Attack Skill, Expert Archery, and Expert Artillery, the Ballista wasn't doing nearly enough damage to justify having groomed it over the past three months. Supposing that I did manage to keep my main hero all the way to the end and that I successfully got him plenty of stat boosts (say, 50 Attack Skill), a Ballista just doesn't seem to dish out as much damage as any decently-sized stack of units on the same hero. Yes, I'm sure that in the campaigns, some of the heroes with even higher Attack Skill can get by just fine, but given the circumstances of this match I was disappointed overall.
@@TheKnownWorld But if you hadn't lost your main hero you wouldn't have stagnated your momentum for a month, allowing the armies to scale up enough to outclass the ballista. Downscaling the armies appropriately while continuing to buff Stannis would have made for a much shorter map. And actually, Crag Hack and Yog's attack skill get around as high as Stannis's was in their first SOD campaigns. What I was referring to was starting a map on 111 with nothing but a ballista and rolling with it. That's where the ballista truly shines, in that you get tempo far quicker than even the cheating AI
Fair points. Unfortunately, I probably won't be revisiting the use of the Ballista anytime soon to give it a round 2. I'm not going to speak for the SoD campaigns since I haven't actually given them a try yet.
Well, I tried to make it as close to "Ballista Only" as possible, but that's not quite how this match turned out which is rather disappointing. Hopefully you still have fun watching it, though!
Do enemy unit only ( you cannot use your faction troops. You have to diplomacy enemy use other dweelings, recruit other faction heroes or take enemy castle)
Good job on beating it btw. It was really challenging to just use balista and really, once the tier 7 comes it becomes really hard to win, so it was kind of understandable that you had to use retaliation. Cheers and looking forward to your next video!
Thanks! I'm still disappointed with how this match turned out overall, but I did the best I could to make it as close to "Ballista Only" as possible. See you in the next episode!
I guess i would want to see a a attempt on The Dead and the Buried at 200%, since its the demo map for Heroes III. And thats mostly nostalgia speaking.
At this time, I'm not interested in doing any custom scenarios for the game. Sorry about that! On the other hand, someone else (Ramsrock39) did a playthrough of Dead and Buried at ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JYhasBxq-QI.html if you're interested.
I have a challenge that might be way too hard, even for you. But seeing what you've done in the past… (Tier 1 Units Only, No Building & No Recruiting, etc.). Max lvl 2 Heroes Only: by that I mean you should dismiss any hero *(with all their army!)* as soon as they reach lvl 3 (or more).
Oh my, now that sounds like one challenge that is too difficult for me even though it seems doable. I'm not quite sure how I would get through that one if I also had to dismiss a hero's army when they hit Level 2. :P
"Halber-diers" ? I think its "hal-berdiers"... (actually "hal-berd-iers" in merriem--webster, by maybe that doesn't help in this case) :) I love your videos, by the way ... I am not really good enough for 200%, but I keep trying .. I usually want to be more careful with every move, and end up spending so much more time on a map...!
